The Money Principle Brain Teaser: what are the three stories for children you like best and why?
Another Friday and it is time for another brain teaser. Last week was very high pressure, high stress and high reward for me. After all this, I feel like thinking about the simple messages in life; the messages that we glean through the stories of childhood. I love children’s stories…
If you fall in debt, would it be forever…
When people fall in love they assume that it is forever. Despite evidence to the contrary I am still to meet anyone who falls in love just for ‘the season’. Strangely, when people first realise how much consumer debt they are in, they have the feeling that it is forever as well. Only difference is that this is not the light headed feeling of love but the suffocating dread of getting a life sentence. At least this is how I felt when I first realised how serious the situation really was.
If the peeps at Positive Money are to be believed and debt is really a mathematical certainty, you have either been, are or will be in debt. There are two approaches to debt: it is either ignored till it is too late or people decide to do something about it; like pay it off. In any case, it feels forever. It doesn’t have to be and here is how we can ensure that debt is temporary, it is a glitch in our movement towards wealth, prosperity and abundance.
On financial independence and financial health
Something has been bugging me lately and when something is bugging me I go away, do some research, do some thinking and write it down. The question that I have been pondering is the following: what is the difference between financial independence and financial health? Now, most literature on personal…
The Money Principle Store Cupboard: three things we learnt
When I asked my friend Elaine to write articles on how to build a store cupboard, there had already been some talk about it, and I knew she had worked hard to create one for herself and her family. We, however, were still resisting. Thinking about it, I have another friend…
Why create a store cupboard?
This article on why we need to create a store cupboard was written by Elaine Colliar from Mortgagefreeinthree.com. Thank you, Elaine! I resisted the idea of menu planning and creating a store cupboard for a very long time. In my head, I thought that laying in stores of food…
Four Ways to Reduce Your Food Spending
Let’s talk about how to reduce your food spending because it is part of sorting out your money. Over the last eighteen months, we have reduced our monthly food expenditure by between one-third and a half. It is anybody’s guess how much we used to spend before my records…
Master Your Wants: My ‘protected wants’
Do you want to master your wants? This is easy: you’ll have to work out you ‘protected wants’ by completing the exercise. I developed and completed this exercise about a year ago and it was meant to stop me lusting after things. Because where temptation is concerned I am like…
How to Master Your Wants and do Your Wallet a Great Favour
You already believe that what has an enormously positive effect on your money is learning to control your wants, not your needs. What you’d like to learn next is how to master your wants. In this blog post, I share with you an exercise for mastering your wants that I…
Conquer your needs or master your wants?
Master your wants or control your needs? This is the question. When I needed to curb my spending, particularly the ‘God Knows What’ part of it, one piece of advice kept cropping out: ask yourself do you really need this? If the answer is ‘no’ just don’t buy it….